Tourists’ Willingness to Pay for Environmental and Sociocultural Sustainability in Destinations: Underlying Factors and the Effect of Age

Abstract

As recent studies show, tourists increasingly favour hotels and other tourism businesses that adopt more environmentally sustainable practices. A tourism depends on and significantly impacts cultural heritage and local communities’ well-being, sociocultural sustainability also plays a significant role on tourists’ decisions. Despite this trend, price is still the main determinant factor in tourists’ choices, and most sustainable practices tend to add operational costs, and consequently, make services more expensive. In this context, more than knowing which sustainable practices are valued the most by tourists, it is important to know how much they are willing to pay a premium price to visit destinations where those practices are carried out. In this context, the present study aimed to explore the dimensions of willingness to pay for sustainability in tourism destinations and the sustainability attitudes that might affect them. Additionally, as previous studies suggest young travellers attribute a greater value to sustainability, differences between age groups were also explored. To this end, data were collected through a survey questionnaire (n = 562) with Portuguese tourists. The questionnaire included 16 willingness to pay items and 22 sustainability attitude items. The results point to two main willingness to pay dimensions and four sustainability attitude factors. Moreover, a higher willingness to pay for environmental and sociocultural sustainability, as well as higher levels of pro-environmental private behaviour, was found amongst younger travellers. The findings offer useful insights for destination managers, which must consider them when planning and promoting innovative tourism products based on nature and cultural heritage.KeywordsSustainabilityCultural heritageTourismDestination choiceCOVID-19PandemicJEL ClassificationZ31 Industry Studies